er, and their
wet cheeks touched.

"If any one ever says that I don't appreciate what you've done for me
and mine," choked Emeline, "it's a lie!"

"Well, it didn't _sound_ like you, Em," Mrs. Tarbury said, drying eyes
between sniffs.

Emeline immediately went over and kissed her, and all three laughed
shakily over a complete reconciliation, which was pleasingly interrupted
by George's gallant offer to take the whole crowd to dinner, if they
didn't mind his eating only tea and toast.

Still, it was decided that Julia should not stay at Mrs. Tarbury's, but
should spend the next week or two with her grandmother in the Mission.
Julia's quiet acceptance of this arrangement was both unexpected and
pleasing to her parents.

But as a matter of fact the girl was rather dazed, at this time, too
deeply sunk in a miserable contemplation of her own affairs to be
conscious of the immediate discomfort of the moment. She had dreamed
many a happy dream, as the years went by, of her father: had thought he
would claim her some day, be proud of her. She had fancied a little home
circle of which she would be the centre and star, spoiled alike by
father and mother. Dearer than any dream of a lover had been to Julia
this hope for days to come, when she should be a successful young
actress, with an adoring Daddy to be proud of her. Now the dream was
clouded; her father was an old man, self-absorbed; her mother--but Julia
had always known her mother to be both selfish and mercenary. More than
this, her little visit in Sausalito had altered her whole viewpoint.
Ignorant of life as she was, and bewildered by the revelations of that
visit, she was still intelligent enough to feel an acute discontent with
her old world, an agonizing longing for that better and cleaner and
higher existence. How to grasp at anything different from life as it was
lived in her mother's home--in her grandmother's, in Mrs.
Tarbury's--Julia had not the most remote idea. Until a few months ago
she had not known that she wanted anything different.

She brooded over the problem night and day; sometimes her hours of
gloomy introspection were interrupted by bursts of rebellious fury. She
would _not_ bear it, she would _not_ be despised and obscure and ignorant,
when, so close to her, there were girls of her own age to whom Fate had
been utterly kind; it was not her fault, and it was not _right_--it was
not right to despise her for what she could not help! But usually he